By 2022, the market for smart-windows materials will be dominated by electrochromic (EC) materials, which will account for 65% of the revenues generated by smart windows materials. The firms that supply EC are well funded and well advanced with their technology and EC is certainly the material to beat in the construction sector, although competition will be significant among different formulations of EC materials.

Meanwhile, SPD materials will follow their own path, primarily in automotive industry, where their high switching speeds are an advantage. Revenues from these materials will reach about $280 million by 2022, assuming SPD windows are adopted by more car makers as seems likely.

New smart-windows technologies and materials are likely to appear in the next few years but will be challenged to compete with established active materials. We anticipate that it will be no significant revenue from these newer materials until the 2020s, but the most likely novel smart materials to succeed will be variants on materials originally developed for displays.